Our Approach

Why Structured Literacy?

Traditional approaches often rely on guessing words from context, which can be detrimental to many learners, especially those with dyslexia or other reading difficulties. Structured literacy provides:

  • Explicit instruction in decoding words
  • Systematic progression of skills
  • Cumulative learning that builds on previous knowledge

How We Teach

Our multisensory approach engages learners through:

  • Visual elements: Seeing letters, words, and their relationships
  • Auditory components: Hearing and distinguishing sounds in words
  • Kinesthetic activities: Writing, tracing, and manipulating letters and words

This comprehensive engagement helps cement learning in long-term memory and caters to diverse learning styles.

What Is Structured Literacy?

It’s important to know both what to teach (the content) and how to teach it (the delivery) with structured literacy.

What to Teach

  • Phonology: the study of sounds in spoken words
  • Sound-symbol (orthography): how to map sounds (phonemes) to letters (graphemes)
  • Syllables: knowing the types of syllables and how to divide words into syllables
  • Morphology: the study of base words and affixes (prefixes and suffixes)
  • Syntax: understanding the grammatical order of words (like sentence structure)
  • Semantics: understanding the meaning of words and sentences

What We Cover

  1. Phonemic Awareness: Recognizing and manipulating individual sounds in spoken words
  2. Phonics: Understanding letter-sound relationships
  3. Fluency: Developing speed, accuracy, and expression in reading
  4. Vocabulary: Building a robust understanding of words and their meanings
  5. Comprehension: Making sense of text at both literal and inferential levels
  6. Spelling and Writing: Applying phonics knowledge to written expression